"Food Inc." Director on the Daily Show

On July 2nd, the Daily Show interviewed Robert Kenner, the director of the new film "Food Inc." Even though the brunt of the interview is about the food system and government subsides for corn & soy, John Stewart manages to put it all into context by bring to light some of the larger social issues our society faces. (In a funny way of course!) See for yourself:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Robert Kenner
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

Food Independence

Take a small stand today. Sign the pledge to buy and eat all locally sourced food for the 4th of July. A coalition of organizations put together a petition and some other actions you can take if you want to take your food Independence a step further. Here's what they have in store for you:

Here’s what you can do:

* Sign their petition either by going to www.foodindependenceday.org or Facebook
* Contact your state’s first family and ask them to share their July 4th menu with us (they can e-mail it to roger(at)kitchengardeners(dot)org)
* If you’re a kid and growing some local food of your own, share your story with others through the “Why I’m a Victory Grower” video contest.

For the skeptics out there who still aren't sure about this whole 'local food' thing and feel like it's an anti-growth, protectionist movement thrown together by a bunch of naive do-gooders I point to the economist John Maynard Keynes. While reading Saving the World at Work by Tim Sanders I came across this interesting fact about buying local that is usually left out. John Maynard Keynes coined the term "local multiplier effect" in his book The General Theory of Employment in 1936. The multiplier effect measures how many times a dollar stays in one community. The theory is that the higher the multiplier effect in a community the more healthy and vibrant that community becomes. So, the buy local movement is nothing new. It is protectionist but it's not anti-growth nor is it a harebrained idea thrown together by a bunch of foodies.

So, as you can see, buying local food or local anything is really the patriotic thing to do this Independence Day!

(Cross-posted on www.slowfoodtufts.blogger.com)

More on the breastfeeding debate

I just saw this article on the New York Time's blog, Economix. Penned by Nacy Folbre, the post explores the challenges of breastfeeding & working: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/got-milk-allowing-breast-feeding-at-work/#more-17769

It still irks me to no end that pregnancy is categorized as a disability by insurers and employers. Hello, this is what a woman's body is made to to! This is a part of the natural process, not some ailment or sign of frailty.

Fresh Film

I received an e-mail about the release of the newest documentary on the food system in the U.S., "Fresh." Since press releases are thoughtfully crafted, and I haven't seen the film yet, I will just use their language.

FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Among several main characters, FRESH features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthur's 2008 Genius Award; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma; and supermarket owner, David Ball, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy.

If you're in the Boston area there is a screening Thursday May 28th at 7 p.m. Harvard will host the screening at: Harvard Northwest Building, 52 Oxford Street, Room B-103, Cambridge, MA 02138

The screening at Harvard will also include a truly amazing panel. So even if the film is a dud (which I highly doubt!) it's worth going just to hear the panel. Following the screening you can experience the awesomeness of the follow local food gurus:

Theresa McCulla (Moderator), Manager, Harvard’s Food Literacy Project
Joel Salatin, Founder, Polyface Farms
Will Allen, Founder, Growing Power
Henrietta Davis, Cambridge City Council
Michael Leviton, Chef, Lumiere Restaurant
Ana Joanes, Director & Producer of FRESH

You can purchase tickets ($15) and find other screenings at the film's website: http://www.freshthemovie.com/screenings/fresh-screenings/

If you go, I would love to hear your feedback, thoughts, critiques, inspirations, etc. about Fresh.

Cross posted at Slow Food Tufts and Culinate.

Rebuilding the Food System

(Cross Posted on slowfoodtufts.blogspot.com and my Culinate blog.



Well, I finished my first year of graduate school! It's been a fantastic 9 months. Although statistics got a bit hairy at times, it was a great first year. As we all know, lot of learning goes on outside the classroom as well. Recently I attended the American Planning Association's national conference in Minneapolis. It was fantastic!

The whole planning field is all new to me, but the more I learn the more I believe that urban planners will play a key role in improving the food system and food environment in the U.S. Planners work in areas critical to improving our food including transportation, community development, environmental impact, and zoning. Each of these areas can contribute to a more sustainable, safe, and healthy food system.

The conference included a number of sessions on improving the food environment and urban agriculture. Although many of the food-focused planners were primarily interested in food production in the urban setting, I see a lot of potential for linking rural and urban communities more fluidly through regional food systems. There is no way that cities will be able to produce all the food they need to sustain themselves even with SPIN farming, roof-top gardens, and greenhouses heated via aquaculture.

Of course there is still plenty to be done in the urban setting. So if you live in a city and want to get involved here are some things you can do:

- Develop a regional food policy council

- Make sure that food is in your city's comprehensive plan (I didn't even know such a thing existed until I attended the conference!)

- Review zoning rules for livestock

- Review zoning rules for community gardens

- Tear out your lawn and put in a vegetable garden. Jac Smit, has a great article title "Eat Half Your Law" if you want more information.

- Ask the city to line the streets with fruit bearing trees

- Ask the city to put a garden on city hall property. The White House is doing, so should you!

- Push your legislators for 10% of the food to be grown within the city

- Make sure that grocery stores can easily accessing economic incentives developed by the city to open stores in under served areas

- Work with the corner markets in your neighborhood to bring in fresh produce and low-fat dairy products


Looking at cities through the context of food, food security, and sustainability should help planners build healthier cities, healthier farms and rural communities, and reduce negative environmental externalities associated with the food we eat.

For more information check out these sites:
Agricultural Urbanism
The American Planning Association's Police Guide on Community and Regional Food Planning
Victory Gardens 2008+
American Farmland Trust
Public Health Law and Policy
National Policy and Legal Analysis Netowrk to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN)
Interdisciplinary Consortium on Urban Planning and Public Health (ICUPPH)

Spring Babies and Feeding

Spring has finally arrived in the northeast! My neighbor's crocuses are shooting up their purple and white little heads. As Persephone returns from the underworld bringing fertility and life back to earth, I find myself contemplating the "most local food"(according to Michael Pollen) -- breast milk.

In my Nutrition in the Life Cycle course, taught by Jeanne Goldberg, we learned about the importance of breast milk. After reading a number of studies supporting exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life, I became a strong supporter of the practice. One interesting finding in relation to childhood obesity and breastfeeding is delayed adiposity rebound. (Adiposity rebound is when the child's growth reaches the nadir on a weight-for-height chart.) Breastfed babies are slower to gain weight which means they delay the time of their adiposity rebound. Children who go through adiposity rebound early (before 5.5 years) are more likely to be over weight or obese as they grow-up.

Gene Goldberg presented the information on breastfeeding in a very strait forward manner. We even read the February 19, 2009 New Yorker, Jill Lepore published "Baby Food: If the breast is best, why are women bottling their milk?" as a supplemental reading to understand the American history of breastfeeding and the current trend to express or pump breast milk.

This month I flipped through The Atlantic and saw "The Case Against Breast-Feeding" by Hanna Rosin. Rosin brings the nitty-gritty reality of breastfeeding into perspective. She finds research indicating that the health benefits of breastfeeding are not substantiated, highlights the physical pain and nuisance breastfeeding creates for women (especially working ones) and publicly shames the affluent suburban mothers who turn bottle feeders into pariah's of the playground.

Really, the truth lies somewhere in between. Sure there are studies that might not be well designed that find breastfeeding has an insignificant impact on the baby's overall health, but honestly, you can control for many factors such as race, socioeconomic status, income, etc and still find that breastfeeding does some good. Even the companies who make the formula know this and base their recipes on the composition of breast milk. Where Rosin does get it right, is that there aren't enough policies in place to make breastfeeding easy for working women. From a lack of adequate maternity leave to no place for working mom's to pump, the U.S. is a long way from truly promoting breastfeeding to women.

Oh, and if the well educated, middle-class Hannah Rosin is annoyed by all the promotional breastfeeding material in her pediatrician's office, she needs to toughen-up. According to Health People 2010, in 1998 only 19% of Black/African-American women breastfed for the first 6 months. For mothers with high school or some college education, in 1998 21% breastfed for the first 6 months. In order to reach the goal of 50% of mothers breastfeeding for the first 6 months by 2010, there are going to have to be repeated messages out there in the public sphere. Rather than complain about over-messaging, you could be constructive and advocate for on-site day care, longer maternity leave, and clean, quiet feeding rooms for women to either breastfeed or bottle feed their babies.

Take Action: http://www.now.org/lists/now-action-list/msg00380.html

Chocolate Season

I think regardless of if you celebrate Valentines Day, February is the season of chocolate. At least here in the northeast, chocolate is an escape from the bitter cold of winter though the exotic and rich flavors the dark confection holds.

Chocolate comes from cocoa beans which are housed in a large pod (see the picture on the left) about the size of an obese sweet potato. They just hang on the trunk of the cocoa tree like strange tumors waiting to be harvested for their chocolate-ly goodness. (I saw one of these rather diminutive trees for the first time in Karala, India this winter and was struck by the uniqueness of the plant.)

As you may know, chocolate is reported to have medicinal qualities and dark chocolate is marketed as a "super food" or "functional food" depending on who is doing the pitch. What the are selling are the phenols in the cocoa. Phenols are a chemical compound that are classified as a phytochemical. For more information you can check out Natural Products from Plants on Google Book Search According to the Yale-New Haven Hospital these phenols are high potency antioxidants that help lower LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol). They also claim that the high saturated fat content of cocoa is not that bad because the liver converts the saturated fat into monounsaturated fat. This area of nutritional study is nascent with little conclusive understanding of the levels needed to positive health outcomes or how they work in combination with other foods. Further study is needed to fully unleash the healing power of chocolate.

Despite the inconclusive nutritional science, culturally chocolate is very interesting as well. Just how did it work its way into become the candy of love? Well, one look at the cocoa pod make you understand why ancient Mexican cultures saw it as a food of fertility. According to a great little slide show on WebMd, "Casanova, the infamous womanizer, made a habit of drinking chocolate before his romantic escapades." A box of chocolates has become the food equivalent of "I love you" due to the tradition of giving a sweet token to your loved one on Valentines Day.

And when you go to purchase that delicious morsel of dark Belgium chocolate, take a moment to think about the sociopolitical aspect of chocolate. Think about where it is grown, and the about where all the fine chocolates come from . . . who gets the short end of the stick when selling a raw commodity? Something tells me its not the Swiss.